


No More Planets

by The_Client



Series: Instruments and Measures [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Exile, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soft Kylux, canon divergence is from the end of The Force Awakens, of a sort, skip the boring battle scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25173499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Client/pseuds/The_Client
Summary: Hux absconds with Ren after the destruction of Starkiller, and discovers there’s more to life than imposing order on the galaxy. (And reluctantly teams up with a very unamused Rey to deal with their mutual enemy.)***“Snoke” – he won’t call himLordnow, let aloneSupreme Leader– “commanded me to bring you to him.”“But you didn't.”“No. I'm afraid I've kidnapped you. I know that might not be want you want. If so, I'm sorry, and I'll turn the ship around.”In the ensuing silence Hux tries to count the beats of his own heart, finds he cannot keep his mind on the task.“Supreme Leader will know you betrayed him. If you go back, he'll … you'll wish he'd execute you.”“I’ll drop myself off on some planet, then, and send you back with the autopilot--”He stops, because every word feels wrong.“No.”“No?” Hux is unable to place the word in context, can hear only rejection.Don't leave me again. No torture of Snoke's could be worse.Nothingcould be worse.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Instruments and Measures [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807441
Comments: 10
Kudos: 73





	No More Planets

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: pain and injury (brief and not graphically described); what might be perceived as subtle dominance/submission dynamics (not sexual)

Hux wakes, stiff-necked from dozing in the pilot’s seat, at the stirring in the portable medical bed.

There's no panic; waking up hurt and displaced in space and time is, after all, a familiar experience for Ren. Just a wince, as he pushes himself up on one arm – the other being strapped across his chest to protect the repair work on his shoulder – and thereby disturbs the half-healed bowcaster wound in his side. Crossing the cabin with well-telegraphed movements, Hux raises the head of the bed with as little invasion of Ren’s personal space as he can manage. Goads himself, as with an internal riot control baton, to retreat again to a respectful distance.

“What's the last thing you remember?”

“The forest on Starkiller. The traitor and the scavenger.”

“Starkiller is no more,” Hux says; still vaguely surprised, days after the event, at how the words fail to pierce him. At how little the state of affairs they encompass _matters_. “Snoke” – he won’t call him _Lord_ now, let alone _Supreme Leader – “_ commanded me to bring you to him.”

“But you didn't.”

“No. I'm afraid I've kidnapped you. I know that might not be want you want. If so, I'm sorry, and I'll turn the ship around.”

In the ensuing silence Hux tries to count the beats of his own heart, finds he cannot keep his mind on the task.

“Supreme Leader will know you betrayed him. If you go back, he'll … you'll _wish_ he'd execute you.”

“I’ll drop myself off on some planet, then, and send you back with the autopilot--”

He stops, because every word feels wrong.

“No.”

“No?” Hux is unable to place the word in context, can hear only rejection.

“No. Don't turn the ship around.”

Then Ren shifts unmistakably in Hux’s direction, and Hux is rocket-launching himself across the cabin to reach his bedside before he can try to rise; his cerebral cortex frantically solving the engineering problem of where to wrap arms and fingers, to maximize bodily contact without putting pressure on the wounds. Ren's own free arm loops around Hux’s back, his uninjured cheek pressed against Hux's hammering heart.

“I was sedated, wasn't I?”

“For some days. I disconnected the drip the moment we were in hyperspace. I'm so sorry, there was no plausible way I could interfere in medbay's decisions about your care--”

“No. Nothing about this is your fault. But the nightmares from the drugs, they were all about you. Seeing you … harmed, or--”

“I'm here. I'm fine.” Then, perceiving the ground to the figure that was _Nothing about this is_ _ **your**_ _fault:_ “I believe you … could not have done other than you did, these past months. That you had your reasons. I won't ask you to share them unless you want to. But...”

_Don't_ _leave_ _me again. No torture of Snoke's could be worse._ _ **Nothing**_ _could be worse._ Hux's lips can't quite form the words – they'd always communicated such profundities in other ways. But Ren had told him that he couldn't completely shut off the telepathy, no matter how he yearned for relief from it; that he couldn't help but absorb the most salient thoughts and emotions of every being around him.

“You have a plan,” Ren says at length. Bemused, and not a question.

“Of _course_ I do. Insofar as it’s possible, given the situation. Are we in immediate danger?” Force-wise, he means: something he himself could not anticipate.

“I don't think so. And not much we can do about it, if we are.”

“Alright then. We'll talk about the plan later.” He eases one hip onto the bed, seeking a position he can sustain, because to release his grip is yet unthinkable. “Darling _._ ”

*

They talk over a prosaic meal of ration bars, Ren having removed the nutrient drip from his arm. They'd slept several hours, the most restful sleep Hux had known in longer than he cares to remember. (Ren's wounds aren’t sufficiently healed to risk jostling in a shared bed, but Hux had positioned the med-bed flush against his own bunk, looping his arm through the side railing to twine it with Ren’s.)

“I assume,” Hux begins, “that Snoke must be after us.”

“I felt him searching for me in the Force, while you were asleep. I think I was able to shield myself. Shield _us_.”

“While _I_ was…? Did you not sleep, yourself?”

“Some. Enough. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Hux frowns, dissatisfied with this answer; but for now urgent practical questions must take precedence.

“Can you do that indefinitely? Shield us?”

“I don't know. Don’t know if I've done it at all, really. Supreme Leader could just be busy, especially if the Resistance found Skywalker. Or he could be toying with us.”

To let them believe they were free, only to snatch that bliss away, days or weeks – years? _–_ later: yes, that was a plausible _modus operandi_ for their erstwhile Supreme Leader.

“Will he send someone after us? Your Knights?”

“I doubt it. They’re … not especially intelligent, or loyal. _I_ wouldn’t trust them with anything discreet.”

Hux sees – and savors – the need for discretion: it must be _humiliating_ for the loathsome old fossil, to have somehow misplaced both of his favorite instruments.

“He could let the galaxy think we’re already in his custody, or dead,” Ren continues, “while he searches in secret.”

(Chagrin twinges in Hux’s heart: if he’d run when he was first tempted, immediately upon retrieving what was left of Ren from Starkiller, they might both be presumed – even by Snoke – to have died in the weapon's immolation.

Or they would both _have_ died, blown to bits in the attempt to enter hyperspace from the disintegrating planetoid's surface. Or Ren would be dead of his wounds, having not received stabilizing treatment on the _Finalizer_ , and Hux … it didn't bear thinking about.)

“If Snoke can seek you with the Force, can anyone else? I’m sorry to have to ask.” In their previous time together, Ren had almost never spoken of his past, and Hux had made a point of never quizzing him about it. (To be fair, Hux didn’t care to discuss his childhood, either.)

“My mother will always know whether I'm alive,” Ren says, surprisingly detached, as if Hux has somehow managed to kidnap him out of his emotional entanglements with these people. “Probably my uncle. And … her _._ ” The scavenger, he means – Rey of Jakku, _the last Jedi hero_ , as the last few days’ spate of hastily produced Resistance propaganda styled her.

“So the Resistance might come after us, as well.”

“Maybe. But … I don't think my mother wants me dead, and the others might defer to her.”

_Don't think. Might._

“So it seems there's nothing for it, but to behave as if we a _ren't_ being pursued by Force-users. And if it turns out we are, just … muddle through?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Hush, you’re not the one who put us here. And it’s enough to get on with, for a start.”

*

Hux parks the shuttle in the hollow of an asteroid with no breathable atmosphere nor mineral resources to recommend it, far from any well-used trade route. He’d disabled the Upsilon’s tracking mechanism while still in hyperspace, but they need to lose the ship – preferably, to see it disassembled for parts – and acquire something less conspicuous. But that requires re-entering the mundane world, trusting – if only in the most limited ways – other beings.

“We'll wait until we can go together,” says Ren, uncharacteristically imperative. Since waking on the Upsilon he’d seemed content hear and acquiesce to Hux’s plans.

“I can take care of myself, you know.” Hux is an excellent shot; has never been stellar at hand-to-hand combat, but always competent enough to pass his assessments; is proud of having kept up his skills when his rank would have permitted laxity.

“I know you can. But I don't _like_ it. Besides, do you know the first thing about offloading a hot ship?”

So they remain ensconced in the asteroid, while Ren hobbles around the cabin, leaning on an improvised cane against the pain in his side. When he says it’s time, Hux refashions the immobilizing bindings from his right shoulder into an open sling, so he can ease into using the arm again.

Mindful of their limited rations and fuel – and shaken by how easily he slips into fantasies of continuing this bottled existence into eternity – Hux throws himself fervently into logistics. He decrees they should stop calling each other by (any of) their real names, to break a habit that could lead to discovery, should they ever be overheard. They devise aliases, but by unspoken agreement, never use them in private. It's surprisingly easy, life without names. Existence has narrowed to the two of them, I and thou.

Few in the galaxy know Kylo Ren's true face – much less with the new scar bisecting it – or that he was Leia Organa's son, whose own appearance had been little recorded beyond childhood. But Hux's address on Starkiller had been widely broadcast. He lets his hair grow, considers possibilities for temporarily altering its color, cultivates a short neat beard. He experiments with modifying his accent – mostly, before long, to invoke Ren’s smile, the near-silent tremor of his laughter.

More permanent alterations would be expensive, and require an inordinate degree of trust in outside parties. Besides, though neither of them is especially averse to changing his own appearance, each loathes to see it done to the other.

They absconded, Hux reminds himself when he catches his precautions spiraling into self-parody, not in fear of imminent death, but because life as they knew it had become intolerable. Survival _at all costs_ is not the goal.

*

In the end Hux must admit it was for the best – to have waited until Ren was fit to lurk beside him, in disreputable cantinas in locales neither the New Republic nor the Order had got around to bothering with, absorbing information until they can pass for borderline players in the local underworld. To be reasonably sure whatever beings they must converse with will find it most tedious to recall details of their appearance, unremarkable as it must surely have been. To know which low-grade criminals intend _only_ to underpay and overcharge them.

(Hux understands that eschewing even these insults is possible. But leaving a trail of beings puzzled over why they'd taken actions so unlike them would hardly be inconspicuous, and exercising his telepathic gifts is still as unpleasant for Ren as it always was. They'll save the miracles for when, stars forfend, they truly need them.)

They wear inconspicuous secondhand clothes topped by well-worn, loose cloaks that anonymize Ren's distinctive silhouette, and make Hux look wider. (The greatcoat that once served that purpose has been relieved of its insignia, unstitched at the seams, and – with some other textile oddments – fashioned into a blanket for the ship’s bunk. Skywalker's vision for a new Jedi order apparently involved a lot of primitive handicrafts.) Ren had joked about masks, and Hux had unjokingly added to his mental to-do list, _look into socially plausible forms of headgear that obscure the face._ But the percentage of galactic cultures – not to say human ones – that wear masks routinely is small enough to potentially trigger fear and hostility in the remainder.

So Hux peers at the illicit ship dealer from beneath a fold of his cloak, casually fashioned into a hood.

“You swear this rust bucket's spaceworthy?”

“Inspect all you like, if you think you know better than me.”

By the time Hux is done, the dealer agrees – with no miracles necessary – to the handful of repairs he identifies, at no additional charge. At a slight discount, in fact, when he offers to perform the labor himself. Then she asks if he'd be willing to look over a few new acquisitions for her, for a further discount. He glances at Ren, who tilts his head infinitesimally: the dealer still has no ill intentions beyond slanting the bargain as far in her favor as she can manage.

At their final (for this transaction) parting, the dealer casually asks where they're headed. Hux randomly names a suitably disreputable location. The dealer has associates there who might be interested in his services.

Those associates have others. Most want equipment inspected or repaired, but a few are in the market for, say, innovative smuggling-compartment designs.

Ren knows his way around a piece of machinery, and carries his share of the hands-on work. But clients assume – Hux doesn't need the Force to read their (largely congratulatory) expressions – that Ren is Hux's bodyguard-cum-lover. Such approximations of the truth should be encouraged, Hux tells himself, on purely practical grounds: they obfuscate any intuitive trail to their old identities, which would be known as bitter enemies to any who had observed them. Public display of affection is (surely!) still not his way; but he comes to find it acceptable (commendable, surely? for _practical_ reasons) to let a client see him, say, lay a brief massaging hand on a shoulder he can tell is bothering Ren, as they inevitably pass close to one another in their work.

“It makes me uneasy,” Ren muses, in a moment when he looks anything but, sprawled atop their patchwork gaberwool blanket. It's come to look quite tatty among the modest but well-made necessities they've acquired. They haven't even had to risk touching Hux's extralegal savings account.

“What?”

“How the Force is smoothing the way for us.”

“ _You're_ smoothing the way for us, aren’t you? Not that I'm chopped shaak-liver.”

Ren regards him enigmatically.

*

“Don't panic,” Ren says one ship’s-morning, as Hux reviews the schematics for the week’s job. “There's no immediate danger. But we're being followed. Or, I am, by way of the Force.”

“Snoke?” Despite the assurances, Hux is already preparing to spring into necessary action (he _does not_ panic).

“No. Her. Rey of Jakku. I don't think I can stop her from finding me, eventually. We're entangled in the Force, for better or worse.”

“You don't sound terribly worried. Especially given … what happened last time you met her.” Hux broaches the topic gingerly; they haven’t really spoken of the events leading up to the destruction of Starkiller, and Hux has kept his promise not to demand explanations.

“That was my fault. I was … mistaken. About many things. And now she … doesn't feel _completely_ hostile? I think she wants something from me. She doesn’t know about you, though. I could meet her alone--”

“No.”

“But I genuinely don't think I'm in danger from her, while you--”

“ _No_.”

*

They let her catch up to them on a deserted street, on an especially lawless frontier station. She's in a disguise of her own, wearing clothing more structured, in more saturated colors, than on Starkiller or in Resistance propaganda. But Hux sees her start as she recognizes him, clocks her hand moving to her belt. His own mirrors it quicker than thought. (He’d grudgingly conceded to try engaging her peaceably, but his and Ren’s long-standing agreement to trust their safety-related instincts always took precedence. And if Ren thought he stretched the boundaries of that agreement unduly, he would wait to bring it up until they were out of sight of the enemy.)

Ren's hand goes out in his ungainly-graceful beckoning gesture, as if to call the bolt back to him. Too late, Hux thinks, without regret – but she activates her lightsaber and deflects the bolt off the blade, shunting it into the ground some meters away. Hux finds her technique awkward and inelegant.

“I just want to talk!” she shouts. “Put the blaster down!”

Hux keeps it trained on her. “You reached for your weapon first. And do you expect me to take orders from you?”

Her eyes flick to Hux's right, where Ren is, as if she expects him to relay her demands. Hux feels, more than hears, Ren’s breath-soft laugh.

“Do either of you really want me shouting your business from this distance?” she tries.

“Your lightsaber isn't exactly inconspicuous, either.”

(Ren’s own laser-sword reposes in a _very_ well-hidden compartment in the innards of their ship. He’d offered, with apparent serenity, to disassemble the all-too-recognizable device and space the parts, but Hux couldn’t quite bear the thought. Ren walks the worlds now with a blaster at his own hip, and sometimes – depending on the neighborhood – a cudgel at his back so alarming-looking that he rarely needs to touch it. Hux never perceived his saberlessness as a vulnerability, until now.)

After a moment, the scavenger deactivates her weapon, but keeps it in her hand. Hux lowers his blaster but doesn't holster it.

“Did Skywalker send you?” he demands, once they've reached conversational distance.

“Do I answer to _you_?” she shoots back, mimicking his earlier scorn. “Stars beyond, why are you even _here?_ Plotting to take over the galaxy again?”

“With what army? What weapons?”

Her gaze shifts again to his right, and he has to admit, it's a fair point. Then either intuition or telepathy strikes, and her eyes widen in what Hux fancies to be first amazement, then revulsion.

At least Ren apparently receives some information in return. “Luke didn't send you. He … refused to train you?”

She narrows her eyes, seeming to briefly consider caginess, before giving it up as a lost cause. No doubt she and Ren are indeed “entangled in the Force,” whatever that means.

“He's become a hermit, embraced a radical non-interference philosophy. You ought to know, it's your fault–”

“My mother, then?”

“Leia didn't _send_ me. But she knows I'm here.” Her nose wrinkles, as if misliking the stench of her next words. “She asked me to tell you she still wants you to come home.”

“Tell her no,” Ren says with surprising gentleness. “You can say you tried, let her read it from your mind if you like. She won't blame you.”

“'No?' Just like that?” She doesn't sound disappointed – much the opposite. “Because you're with _him_ now?”

“The answer has always been no. The person she wants no longer exists. And even that person … couldn’t _be_ , there.”

It falls to Hux to break the ensuing silence.

“So why _are_ you here, scavenger?”

She heaves out an impatient breath. “Snoke. He’s looking for me, of course, but that’s not the worst of it. I’ve gotten good enough at shielding myself from other beings, between the books I stole from Skywalker and some tips from Leia. But even when I’ve blocked him – even when I don’t think he’s actively seeking me – his image is in my dreams, every night.”

“The Force,” says Ren. “Still trying to have its way with us.”

“I thought it would be happening to you, too. And you must want Snoke gone. He's not going to just let you two … do whatever it is you're doing, forever, is he?”

Hux sees all too clearly where this is going. “Couldn't we just give her some hints on how to find the _Supremacy?_ ” he mutters, sidelong. “Or could you do something with the Force? Give her Snoke's … scent, as it were, so she can track him down on her own?”

“Maybe.” But Ren has gone, alarmingly, into what Hux recognizes as mission-planning mode. “He'd be suspicious of her alone, though. If he thought I was returning to him, bringing her along as a peace offering—”

“Are you sure you wouldn't be?” she interrupts sharply.

He takes his time answering, thinking it through. “I don't want to,” he says at last. “I think I can resist. Now. But when Supreme Leader is before me … Knowing my past behavior, it would be irrational not to consider the possibility.”

_You would never,_ Hux wants to say. But even now Ren refers to Snoke as _Supreme Leader._

“This conversation is over,” Hux snaps. Then, to head off the scavenger's indignant retort, “For now.”

*

“You didn't tell me.”

At Hux's insistence, they'd waited to return to their ship – their third, since the Upsilon – until Ren felt the scavenger enter hyperspace, a show of good faith on her part.

“I did tell you. That Supreme Leader would try to find me in the Force, that I would do my best to hold it off. If I’d ever thought we were in immediate danger from him I’d have let you know.”

“That was about Snoke. She said, _the Force_ goads her. Both of you _._ And … _every night?_ I could hear her exhaustion, even through her tough posturing. You never told me it was that bad.”

“It's always been bad, for me,” says Ren very quietly. “The Force. You've known that. You being distressed over it too doesn't make it better.”

He takes a half-step toward Hux, then stops, unsure of his welcome. Which is unbearable, so Hux sits down on the double-wide bunk, extends a beckoning arm into the space beside him.

“Besides,” Ren murmurs once they're wrapped around each other. “It's not so bad. It's like the Force can't reach me so easily, here.” A light squeeze indicates their embrace. “She doesn't have anything like that.”

Hux allows himself a few moments, to contemplate the novelty of _pity_ for the scavenger.

“What if she betrays you? Is it not her duty, as a Jedi, to do so?”

“She doesn't mean to, at least not now. She has her own sense of honor, and she respects my mother. Besides, she survived to adulthood as a scavenger on Jakku. She can't be a perfect Jedi paragon, any more than I could be what Supreme Leader wanted. The perfect monster.”

“No. I'm the monster,” Hux avows matter-of-factly.

As intended, Ren smiles, the movement of his facial muscles palpable against the junction of Hux’s neck and shoulder.

“Supreme Leader thought the Force created her to counteract me. _Darkness rises, and the Light to meet it._ But … the whole idea of the Darkness and the Light seems so … simplistic, now? The more time passes” – away from Snoke, Hux thinks; perhaps away from Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa as well – “the more I feel that what the Force abhors, is a monoculture.”

“Anti-entropy?” Hux suggests. “Evolution? Metaphors, of course.”

“Yes. And yes. And not metaphors, exactly. Manifestations?”

And Snoke would make a monoculture. As Hux would have, in his way. _Order._ It saddens him, that the Force itself would oppose such an idea – but not nearly as much as he would once have thought _._

“You know I'd never make a decision like this without you, right? We can go on as we are.”

(Until the old ghoul finished with Skywalker and the scavenger and devoted his full attention to locating and punishing them. Or Ren’s mind gave out under the strain of the Force’s imperative.)

“I know, darling. Let me think on it.”

*

“The three of us will do this together,” Hux declares. “He won't turn against me, no matter the temptation to bow again before Snoke.”

The scavenger's indignant grimace has already grown too familiar.

“You're so sure of that?”

“Would I risk myself if I weren’t?” (He would, in this instance, but no doubt she believes otherwise.)

“You'll be no use in the fight. Keeping you safe will be a hindrance.” _And not to me,_ her tone says clearly, _because I won’t bother._

“I'm hardly helpless. I almost succeeded in shooting _you,_ when last we met.”

She opens her mouth, closes it, frowns.

“I'd resigned myself to bargain with Kylo Ren,” she says at length, “because the Force tells me it's necessary, and because of Leia, and because … since the interrogation room on Starkiller, I know the situation isn't as simple as seems. Besides, helping to destroy Snoke would be a sort of logical amends. But _you--_ ”

“I'm just a monster. Perfectly _simple,_ ” Hux agrees acidly. He doesn't care a molecule's width what she thinks of him; it's the suggestion that Ren owes _amends_ that raises his hackles. “But not the monster of concern to you right now. That's Snoke. And the Force says you need us to take him down.”

“I don't need _you,_ Starkiller _\--_ ”

“This isn’t negotiable, Rey.” Ren, very softly – but his tone sends pinpricks dancing down even Hux’s spine.

The scavenger studies Hux intently – reading him, perhaps, in her inelegant effortful way. Ren has told him that Force-users' abilities vary in kind as well as intensity, that telepathy isn't an ever-present sixth sense for her, that she has to _concentrate_. He knows, without asking, how hopelessly Ren envies this.

“Will you at least swear, on whatever you hold sacred, not to blow up any more planets? Or try to conquer them, either?”

“I have what I need,” Hux replies. “Refrain from taking it from me, and I'll have no further ambitions.”

*

Hux wakes disoriented. He's lying down, on his side like he prefers, on what feels like a passable sleep surface – but not _their_ bed. He's … _uncomfortable_ all over, in a hard-to-define way, but not unbearably so. The familiar broad hand stroking his back grounds him against any incipient panic.

“I shot the old ogre,” he says, remembering. Snoke – assuming Hux had come to grovel, too arrogant even to have him relieved of weapons – twisting his mouth into a sneer; preparatory, no doubt, to some insult- and innuendo-laden monologue on his wayward apprentice’s inevitable return. The prospect had simply been unbearable.

Ren's laugh is shaky, voice edged with what Hux recognizes as suppressed pain. But he sounds almost gleeful.

“You sure did.”

“I didn't kill him, did I?”

“No. He has – had – ways of protecting himself against that. But it _helped_. Don't listen to Rey if she says otherwise.”

Hux decides, for the moment, not to pursue the odd tangent.

“What's wrong with me?”

“You were hit by Force lightning. It doesn't do any real damage – unless your heart or your brain gives out from the pain. Otherwise your nerves just … remember, for a while. I can help you sleep it off, if you want.”

“No. But thank you.” He remembers now, the agony – but only for an instant, before it was … redirected. Though even that instant had been enough to render him unconscious. “You took the brunt of it.”

“I'm used to it. It'll pass. It always did.”

“Are you hurt, otherwise?”

“He's fine. I mean, we're roughed up, but nothing to bother a warrior.”

The scavenger looms into Hux's field of vision, looking not nearly as worse for wear as Hux feels, or Ren sounds.

“Speak for yourself,” he says.

She ignores him, overlooks him to catch Ren's eye. “Will you take the pilot's station for a few minutes?”

It's a transparent excuse. The ship – Hux now recognizes the one she supplied for the mission; thankfully she'd sense enough not to choose Ren's father's – is minding itself well enough. But Hux nods, pushing himself to a sitting position, and Ren rises from the edge of the bunk. The Jedi drops into his place.

“Have you ever been sorry at all, for the Hosnian system?”

Whatever he expected, it wasn't that. Had he been? He'd never thought about it. There was no time, those first few days, and afterward … it had been as another life.

“I argued against striking the _entire_ Ileenium system. Might have argued the same for the Hosnian, had I thought Snoke would listen.” Had he not hoped – foolishly, he’d known even at the time – that single _audacious_ gesture would exorcise the creature’s madness, convince him Skywalker was no longer a threat, restore some level of rationality to the governance of the Order. “I hate to see resources wasted. And I don't especially enjoy cruelty.”

He was just indifferent to it, save when it threatened to fall upon one of his own. Of whom, in his adult life, there had been only one.

“But I believed in the Order. Still believe in the philosophy the Order was meant to stand for, I suppose. And if Snoke had used the weapon strategically, striking Hosnian Prime alone would have ended the war. Ended a great deal of suffering, throughout the galaxy. Satisfied?”

She clearly isn't. “You're so hard to read.”

“Yes, I know I'm a sociopath.”

“I wondered if Kylo Ren would turn from you,” she continues as if he hadn’t spoken, “back to the Light, once Snoke was dead and no longer able to directly influence him. I'm not sorry he won't be returning with me. As much as I care for Leia, I can't forgive what he did. But I'd like to be able to tell Leia her son is … safe? Even sort of happy?”

“And you think my precise degree of sociopathy has _what_ to do with that?”

“He went half out of his head for a while, when his connection to Snoke was severed. Lost his brain-to-mouth filter. Talked my arm off, carrying you back to the ship, about how you used to kiss his broken bones better.”

“Snoke broke them. Not me.”

“It still sounds like a rather unhealthy dynamic.”

“One _could_ look at it that way, I suppose.”

“And now?”

“No one hurts him like that now.”

“Because you don't allow it?”

That subtlest of emphases on _allow_.

“I'm not his _master,_ Rey.” _Not that it's any of your business._ “If he didn't choose to follow me, I'd follow him. Had he wished to return to Snoke at any point, I'd have followed, though it meant far worse than my death. Ask him.”

“He's not a reliable narrator.”

“Of his own experience? How dare you.” And Leia Organa thought he'd go back, to be so infantilized for the rest of his life.

“Did you do it on purpose? Draw Snoke's ire onto yourself right away, knowing it would give him the push he needed? Did he consent to that?”

Hux says nothing.

At length, the Jedi sighs and rises.

“Don't blow up any more planets.”

“I keep my bargains. You worry about yours.”

*

Their ship is still concealed in the asteroid where they’d left it. Hux comms his alias’s pay-as-you-go holo-inbox, finding it full of new messages. He's been incommunicado for days; some of the potential clients will have moved on to other options, but not all. There are fewer offers of grunt work, these days; more requests for engineering and design. More inquiries from semi-legitimate and even fully legitimate clients. Soon they'll be able to trade in the ship again, or start accumulating components to build their own.

(When clients ask why Hux doesn't hire employees, truly expand his business – perhaps under the auspices of one of the crime syndicates – he demurs that he and his partner are simply too wrapped up in each other.)

They still – always – must be cautious. They can't flaunt their old identities, or let their new ones become powers in the underworld, and expect the reconstructed New Republic to ignore it. But so long as plausible deniability is maintained, Hux believes Leia Organa won’t move against them. Nor will her heir-apparent, who – so far as the galaxy will ever know – vanquished the dastardly Snoke single-handed.

Hux fervently hopes never to meet her again.

“Where are we going?” Ren half-yawns, leaning on the back of the pilot's seat.

Hux flips a familiar sequence of switches. “Just far enough off this rock to kill the engine and look at the stars for a while.” They'd chosen this ship, among several roughly equivalent ones, for the small viewport in the crew quarters. “We can follow up on the jobs after a proper sleep shift.”

As it turns out, they're both too tired for much stargazing. Hux is nearly asleep – limbs wrapped around Ren to maximize contact, to offer every modicum of comfort he can against the lingering buzz of the Force lightning, the effects of his own lesser exposure having already faded – when Ren murmurs, “Thank you.”

“For standing with you against Snoke?”

“That. The kidnapping. All of it.”

“It was my pleasure.” A meaningless courtesy, and the literal truth: the selfish motivation of a monster.

_No more planets,_ he muses, as he drifts away. There is no need. The monster is content.


End file.
